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A funny thing happened on the way to the glorious democracy ostensibly emerging in Egypt. CBS reporter Lara Logan, "covering the jubilation" as CBS put it, was surrounded by a mob of men screaming, "Jew, Jew!" who beat and sexually assaulted her. She is currently recovering in a U.S. hospital from injuries described as "serious." Despite the fact that the incident occurred last Friday, CBS sat on the story until it became apparent that other members of the media had gotten wind of it. Why? The bet here is that this incident interferes with the mainstream media-established narrative regarding the true nature of some "freedom-loving" Egyptians. People yearning for democracy aren't supposed to be anti-Semitic thugs or sexual predators as well. Thus, a genuine news item became an "un-story."

Perhaps the mainstream media news organizations should no longer be called news organizations. Perhaps a better name would be narrative shapers. If there is one certainty that exists today, it is the idea that truth has become a sidebar to political agendas. CBS and others operate one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase with the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan's immortal contention that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

Here is an unpleasant fact: Islam treats women and non-believers like second-class citizens, aka dhimmis, under the best of circumstances. Under the worst of circumstances, dhimmitude can literally be deadly.

How deadly? Another "unpleasant" reality being kept under the radar by our mainstream narrative shapers involves a 14-year old Bangaladeshi girl known as Mossamet Hena or Hena Begum. Hena was raped by her 40-year old married cousin. For her "crime," she was first beaten by family members. After that, a village arbitration committee comprised of elders and clerics using Sharia Law as their guide, issued a fatwa calling for the girl to receive 100 lashes with a whip. After 80 blows, Hena fell unconscious and died in a hospital six days later. The village also imposed a $700 fine on her family in a country where the average annual income is $520.

Who covered the story? Other than the blogosphere, my research revealed two traditional news sources: the BBC and USA Today. But USA Today didn't do its own story--it cited a Bangaladesh newspaper, the Daily Star, as its source. Why would such a story remain under the radar? National Review's Andrew C. McCarthy, who mentioned this atrocity in a recent column, explains:

"Under sharia, rape cannot be proved absent the testimony of four witnesses. Rapists tend not to bring witnesses along for their attacks. In any event, moreover, sharia values a woman's testimony as only half that of a man, so the deck is stacked and rape cannot be proved in most cases. Yet that hardly means the report of rape is of no consequence. Unable to establish that she'd been forcibly violated, the teenager became in the eyes of the sharia court a woman who'd had sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Thus the draconian lashing sentence that became a death sentence."

Such clarity is utterly anathema to a mainstream media which has hitched its wagon to the multiculturalist star. It is a linkage so secure that a 14 year old girl first raped and then beaten to death is swept into obscurity, lest the true nature of Sharia Law be revealed in all its bloodthirsty excess. It is a linkage so secure that even the sexual mauling of one of its own is to be calculatingly suppressed, lest some of the actors in the current narrative of "jubilant Egyptian the democracy" be revealed as the tip of a less-than-jubilant, no-so-democratic iceberg.

Make no mistake: CBS only revealed the story when other news organizations got wind of it. At that point they decided to be "in front of the story" as they say in newsrooms. Despite that decision, CBS still attempted to rationalize it, according to an inside source who told the NY Post that "Logan was 'involved in the process' of deciding whether to make her attack public," implying that her permission was necessary in order to disseminate the story. That's nonsense, plain and simple.

What is really going on in the Middle East? Upheaval--of a largely undefined nature. Where is it leading? Despite mountains of "expert" analysis, one really knows, not even the participants themselves. The American news media? A pack of Walter Durantys with narratives as tailored as those the NY Times Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter spun about the great "democratic reformer" known as Josef Stalin. A group of narrators as practiced in the art of taqiyya, which is defined as lying to protect Islam, as the Islamists themselves.

And not just Islamists. In my entire career as a columnist, I can't recall a time when so many members of the Fourth Estate were so willing to run interference for a president and his administration. Can anyone remotely imagine CBS spiking the same story if George W. Bush were president? Lara Logan would have been the poster girl for "unrealistic expectations of democracy in Egypt." Bush would have been thoroughly excoriated for his idea that freedom is "G0d's gift to mankind," even as Barack Obama's water-carriers have been characterizing the events in Egypt as "one the great triumphs of the human spirit" (Thomas Friedman, NY Times), or "a massive eloquent validation of the moral force and power of non-violent civil disobedience" comparable to the "legacies of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King." (Clarence B. Jones, Huffington Post).

Tell it to Lara Logan, fellas.

I wish Ms. Logan a speedy recovery. I wish I could do the same for Hena Begum. If it were up to the far too many narrative shapers in the mainstream media, you wouldn't have heard a word about either one.

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